Greetings and welcome to this bright and breezy post–Labor Day edition of the Carnival of Fools! Yes, I’m well aware that a dark and dreary quarter-century anniversary is approaching — I have saved that (rather small and personal) memory for Friday — but instead let us keep with the spirit of the weather, which is utterly fabulous ’round these parts right now. Blue and carefree, windy and welcoming even in the late summer heat, the Carnival of Fools has parked itself here on the corner of September and fall during this abbreviated week to welcome you into the final stages of the 2026 midterm campaign.
New England Prepares to Emphasize Its Pointlessness
Autumn at the Carnival of Fools is always a season of reflection. The crisp air sweeps in from the north and blows away all of the chaos and hugger-mugger of a season of dispute, leaving us far away from the claustrophobic hothouse climate of the summer’s primaries. Cooler heads prevail in the fall, and that’s why I’ve always figured that the Northeast’s tinier states wait until the entire primary circus has run its full course before deciding which way to vote: Although a state like New Hampshire likes to pretend that it’s a trendsetter come presidential years, its position in the electoral caboose of the midterm primary calendar, along with the similarly deluded First State of Delaware — which votes next week, as if you cared — reflects its proper place.
And in an alternate universe, today’s New Hampshire primary might be worth the attention. Former Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte (remember her?) is up for reelection in her new(ish) position as governor, whereas former Republican Senator John E. Sununu (remember him?) is running for his old seat once again, now that Senator Jeanne Shaheen — who bounced him out of his position in 2008, as New England was swooning for Barack Obama — is vacating the seat. (If you’re noticing that New Hampshire politicians are a weird and clannish group who enjoy swapping positions with one another, then you will be amused to discover that Sununu’s opponent in the primary is none other than former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, who himself already has one losing New Hampshire Senate campaign under his belt.)
But alas, the year is 2026, not 2014. An open Senate seat in New Hampshire would be a prime target in an out-year for the Republican Party, but not a party in the throes of Donald Trump’s second midterm election. Sununu is expected to cruise to victory tonight and is expected to face off against Democratic Representative Chris Pappas in November. If, for some reason, Pappas is sandbagged by his DSA-affiliated primary opponent Karishma Manzur tonight, then we will have reason to revisit this race. Until then, the Granite State remains frustratingly off the board for the GOP, remanded to noncompetitiveness by the realities of time and place.
And then there’s lonely little Rhode Island, which hates humanity (and itself) so much that it has chosen to hold its primary tomorrow, on Wednesday, as if to emphasize the state’s antisociality. As all know already, the nation has no need for Rhode Island, the unofficial appendix of America. For centuries, this inexplicable footnote of a state — a land of surly coffee-milk sippers, second-rate mafiosi who couldn’t hack it in Boston, and union Democrats — has dangled like an unsightly skin tag off of the armpit of Massachusetts. And now they’re turning on themselves — so let’s briefly enjoy it.
Unless I miss my guess, incumbent Democratic Governor Dan McKee is going to be run out of office on his shield tomorrow night and exchanged by an angry electorate for business executive Helena Foulkes. Her primary qualification? Not being Dan McKee! Because in a state the size of a torn postage stamp, all politics is local — and McKee has presided over a logistical disaster that has crippled the daily business of the state.
In the capital of Providence, the Washington Bridge — which connects the city over the Seekonk River with East Providence (and ultimately Massachusetts) — has been shut down since 2023 because of “critical failure” of some of its rusted-out 1960s-era components. The traffic disaster serves as a perfect metaphor for the rotting, rusted-out reality of Rhode Island’s entire state infrastructure, a model of post-industrial blight envied only by places such as Bridgeport, Conn.
There are other reasons why McKee is in trouble — for one thing, he is as affable as any given Rhode Island politician, which is to say he comes across like a shady contractor constantly trying to upcharge. But this is a purely internal Democratic spectacle, alas — in a state as damned as Rhode Island, the closest thing to a Republican on offer is the pirate ghost of Linc Chafee’s career. So we Americans can only watch this barnacle-encrusted ship of fools as it sails on, to an uncertain fate.
Leak-Hunt at the Pentagon
A quick note on plumbing. The New York Times reports that the Pentagon is currently in quiet meltdown mode, as Pete Hegseth hunts with increasingly Queeg-like desperation for the names of the men who let it be known that America is walking around, in geostrategic terms, with its pants around its ankles:
U.S. government investigators have taken the extraordinary step of subjecting roughly 50 members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff to polygraph tests over leaks to journalists, including about how the Iran war has created a shortage of crucial munitions, according to officials briefed on the move.
Now, I’m not a wise man, or even a particularly informed one. But as one old enough to have seen his share of mole hunts related to national security and Washington media (remember Valerie Plame?), experience has taught me that mass polygraphy in the Pentagon is both a sign that matters are being taken seriously . . . and that paranoia reigns.
Polygraphs are a blunt, crude, arguably useless tool — they measure only stress; they don’t read minds. I consider them little better than witchcraft, with a veneer of scientism sprinkled on top. (I am not alone: They are universally inadmissible as legal evidence for precisely that reason.) Polygraphs catch amateurs, not professionals — and if the Department of Defense means to imply that under Hegseth’s tenure they have restocked their ranks with amateurs, then that is its own sort of admission.
But no polygraph ever caught Aldrich Ames. If polygraphy veers perilously close to fortune-telling, then (beyond all else) it is a humiliation ritual to be forced, by a panicked Pete Hegseth, to submit to such capricious judgment. It reeks of a man more concerned with concealing his own failures than of a man worried about fixing them. In fact, I have learned only one thing from this story: The leaks are probably accurate.
Until next week.